Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

Backstory - I’m in the middle of a project where I’m upgrading an older EE1x build to EE2 and doing a reshuffle of the information architecture & main navigation.  As part of this work I want to do some content restructuring to better fit the redesign, improve workflow, and take advantage of some of the new build approaches that have emerged since this site was built. 

For example, the site has many field groups where there are 6 relationship fields to determine sidebar content, and the templates have 6 sets of conditionals looking for content in each one before returning markup.  I want to convert these to single Playa fields.

However I also see very large fieldsets where I suspect a number of the fields are empty and I’d like to strip out unused fields.  I know I can create a quick template with all the fields in it for a quick inspection, but it’s tiresome with so many fields.  I know I can drop to the MySQL level and write some queries, but I imagine this need isn’t specific to me and think an addon might be a great solution here, especially as more of us work on upgrading & refreshing older ExpressionEngine site builds.

So what I want is a addon that will tell me:

• Channel name
• Total number of entries
• Totally empty fields by name
• Populated fields with a count of entries that have content in that field

Example:
Channel: Our Staff

Empty Fields:
Job History / {job_history}
Previous Employer / {previous_employer}
Photo / {photo}

Other Fields # with content / total entries
Title / {title} - 57/ 57
Name / {name}  - 57/57
Full Name / {full_name}  - 12 / 57
Spouse Name / {spouse_name} -  2 / 57

Finding field cruft is my immediate issue, but wonder if an addon could look for all system cruft in addition to unused fields?  Unused channels, unused templates, pending member accounts, etc?  And then more than just reporting them give tools to manage right from a centralized interface.

Easy to wish…;)

This week marks the 9th anniversary of Boyink Interactive.  I’ve said it every year and I’ll say it again - I just can’t believe I get to keep doing this work, involved in an awesome development community and doing work for great clients.  The big difference with this current year is that we took the business on the road and are now working from a 30’ fifth wheel travel trailer that we’ve dragged to 21 states since last September.

Working on the road has been a challenge - but one that I’ve greatly enjoyed.  I’ve been on conference calls at highway rest areas, did work for clients while in somewhat remote New Mexico campgrounds, alternated work with daytrips to places like the Grand Canyon, and have had days not go well because an expected visit to a local library didn’t find a comfortable seat or reliable wi-fi.  I’m writing this post from an RV park outside of Durango, CO where it’s currently 40 degrees and snowing - which is causing us to rethink our plans to go both north and higher in elevation. 

I expect at some future date I’ll put together a more complete post on the up and downsides of being a “technomad” - but suffice to say for now I have a hard time thinking about going back to life as it was, working in my basement office back in W. MI with its little ground-level windows with views of my grass.

I couldn’t have lasted this long in business without owing thanks - to God, my wife and family, many clients & students over the years, EllisLab, and the great ExpressionEngine community. 

Sitting about an hour from the Grand Canyon, unable to decide where we are pointing this RV next, I’ve been perusing this support thread on the ExpressionEngine forums where there is a conversation going on around how EllisLab should handle ExpressionEngine support.

That’s a big question, and in reading the thread the only immediate thought I have is I’m glad that it’s Leslie Camacho’s job to figure it out and not mine.  One of the bigger reasons I feel for Les is that the decision is largely a business decision, one that needs to be made in the context of the EllisLab business model. Not to say that user & customer input isn’t important - EllisLab is asking for it and I’d encourage you to respond.  I’ve already coordinated some conversations between clients and EllisLab and had some great feedback from both sides.

That aside, my name was brought up in the thread as a provider of learning materials for EE and I wanted to respond to a couple of points.

Continue reading…

In college I took a number of writing classes.  From scriptwriting to poetry to creative writing to news writing, if the class involved writing I signed up.  Why?  Because it was easier for me to get higher grades than classes involving math or other project-related work.  Writing projects were also solo endeavors and not involving group work that other classes often involved, which was easier for me as an off-campus commuter student. 

While the topics, styles and audiences were different across those classes, there was a common theme communicated by the instructors:

Show, don’t tell.

Continue reading…

At last year’s ExpressionEngine & CodeIgniter Conference I gave a presentation on how to handle the hand-off of an ExpressionEngine based site to a client.  The video from that presentation has just been made openly available on Vimeo and appears below:

EECI2010 | Mike Boyink from EECI Conference on Vimeo.